Beloved

Beloved, novel by Toni Morrison, published in 1987 and winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The work examines the destructive legacy of slavery as it chronicles the life of a Black woman named Sethe, from her pre-Civil War days as a slave in Kentucky to her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873. Although Sethe lives there as a free woman, she is held prisoner by memories of the trauma of her life as a slave.

Summary

The novel is based on the true story of a Black slave woman, Margaret Garner, who in 1856 escaped from a Kentucky plantation with her husband, Robert, and their children. They sought refuge in Ohio, but their owner and law officers soon caught up with the family. Before their recapture, Margaret killed her young daughter to prevent her return to slavery. In the novel, Sethe is also a passionately devoted mother, who flees with her children from an abusive owner known as “schoolteacher.” They are caught, and, in an act of supreme love and sacrifice, she too tries to kill her children to keep them from slavery. Only her two-year-old daughter dies, and the schoolteacher, believing that Sethe is crazy, decides not to take her back. Sethe later has “Beloved” inscribed on her daughter’s tombstone. Although she had intended for it to read “Dearly Beloved,” she did not have the energy to “pay” for two words (each word cost her 10 minutes of sex with the engraver).

These events are revealed in flashbacks, as the novel opens in 1873, with Sethe and her teenage daughter, Denver, living in Ohio, where their house at 124 Bluestone Road is haunted by the angry ghost of the child Sethe killed. The hauntings are alleviated by the arrival of Paul D, a man so ravaged by his slave past that he keeps his feelings in the “tobacco bin” of his heart. He worked on the same plantation as Sethe, and the two begin a relationship. A brief period of relative calm ends with the appearance of a young woman who says that her name is Beloved. She knows things that suggest she is the reincarnation of Sethe’s lost daughter. Sethe is obsessed with assuaging her guilt and tries to placate the increasingly demanding and manipulative Beloved. At one point, Beloved seduces Paul D. After learning that Sethe killed her daughter, he leaves.

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The situation at 124 Bluestone worsens, as Sethe loses her job and becomes completely fixated on Beloved, who is soon revealed to be pregnant. While the lonely and largely housebound Denver initially befriends Beloved, she begins to grow concerned. She finally dares to venture outside in order to ask the community for help, and she is given food and a job. As the local women attempt to stage an exorcism, Denver’s employer arrives to take her to work, and Sethe mistakes him for “schoolteacher” and tries to attack him with an ice pick. The other women restrain her, and during the commotion Beloved disappears. Paul D later returns to the grieving Sethe, promising to care for her, and Denver continues to thrive in the outside world.

Analysis

Beloved offers a harrowing look at slavery and its lasting impact. The intensely shocking and moving narrative was written in a variety of voices and lengthy fragmentary monologues, which, like the character of Beloved herself, are sometimes ambiguous. Morrison’s beautiful language and intense imagery, however, were rightly celebrated in this classic work. A film adaptation starring Oprah Winfrey was released in 1998.